A Preliminary Study of Whole Blood Transcriptome Analysis Using RNA Sequencing in Repetitive Low-Level Blast Exposure in Career Breacher

Repetitive low-level blast exposure is one of the major occupational health concerns in the US mil-itary service members and law enforcement, and the underlying biological mechanisms remain controversial. Therefore, this study is to identify gene expression using RNA sequencing in the whole blood sample from experienced breachers and unexposed control. We performed experi-mental RNA sequencing using Illumina's HiSeq 2500 Sequencing System in whole blood samples from 15 experienced breachers and 14 age, sex, race matched unexposed control. We identified 10 significantly dysregulated genes between experienced breacher and unexposed control with FDR corrected < 0.05. One upregulated gene included LINC00996 (long intergenic non-protein coding RNA 996) and 9 downregulated genes including IGLV3-16 (immunoglobulin lambda variable 3-16), CD200 (CD200 molecule), LILRB5 (leukocyte immunoglobulin like receptor B5), ZNF667-AS1 (ZNF667 antisense RNA 1), LMOD1 (leiomodin 1), CNTNAP2 (contactin associ-ated protein 2), EVPL (envoplakin), DPF3 (double PHD fingers 3), and IGHV4-34 (immunoglobu-lin heavy variable 4-34). Dysregulated of these genes' expression are associated with nervous system development and organismal development. The dysregulated gene expression reported in our study is functionally associated with chronic inflammation and immune response in repeti-tive low-level blast exposure, which may have a negative influence on neurological health. Overall design: RNA-seq on blast vs. control